Nanotechnology has many applications throughout biology, biochemistry, chemistry, medicine, genetics, diagnostics, and therapeutics. In addition to generating totally new technologies, nanotechnology also promises to further enable existing technologies to be miniaturized to sub-micron levels. Too often, technology is limited to the micron scale. For example, nucleic acid microarrays have been commercialized at a micron level for biological and genetics applications including documenting gene expression on a genome-wide scale (see, for example, A Primer of Genome Science, G. Gibson and S. Muse, 2002, Chapters 3-4). Present microarrays include the cDNA and oligonucleotide types. A strong commercial need now exists, however, to make arrays on a much smaller, nanometer scale, particularly at lateral dimensions of less than about 100 nm. In other words, nucleic acid nanoarrays are needed with much higher densities of sample sites, which approach the size of single molecules, monolayers, and sub-100 nm dimensions. Production methods used to produce microarrays, however, generally are not capable of nanoarray production. Moreover, currently used robotic printing of these arrays can suffer from the printing pins being expensive, fragile, prone to clogging, poor uniformity, and tendency to deliver doughnut-shaped spots as the nucleic acid spreads away from the tip. In addition to nucleic acid arrays, peptide arrays are also important, and at times, combined nucleic acid and peptide structures are of interest. Hence, novel nanotechnology is needed which enables the production of nanoarrays at a commercial level and pushes the limits of microarray miniaturization. In particular, difficulties become more severe when breaking the sub-100 nm barrier, when entering the realm of single molecules and monolayers, and when entering the commercial marketplace.
Nanoscopic tips including scanning probe microscopic (SPM) tips have generally been used to characterize nanoscale structures but their use in fabrication at the nanoscale is much less developed. Early attempts at fabrication were not successful. A need exists to make better use of nanoscopic SPM tips in nanoscale fabrication including, for example, the production of nanoarrays with applications both in the biological and non-biological arts. SPM tips are of particular interest if they can be used for direct writing and patterning of substrates at a molecular level. The challenge of direct writing at this level is particularly significant for direct writing of biological compounds including nucleic acids. Improvements are needed which provide, for example, better resolution, higher reproducibility, better stability, and better retention of molecular recognition and hybridization. One particularly important challenge is the direct writing of single nucleic acid strands, wherein molecular size and charge effects may become important, factors which generally are less relevant for direct writing of uncharged, small molecules. Indirect methods are known for generation of nucleic acid structures at small scales, wherein for example nucleic acids are absorbed to existing lithographic features. Nevertheless, direct writing provides significant advantages over indirect pathways.
One method for direct write nanolithography is DIP PEN NANOLITHOGRAPHY™ printing and deposition (i.e., DPN™ printing and deposition), which is described further below and is being developed at Northwestern University in the Mirkin group and at NanoInk, Inc. (Chicago, Ill.). DPN™ and DIP PEN NANOLITHOGRAPHY™ are trademarks of NanoInk, Inc. This method is versatile and can be carried out with readily accessible equipment. Complicated stamps and resists are not generally needed. Despite the success of this technology to date, improvements are still needed.
Finally, interest in generating nucleic acid features on a nanoscale also arises because of the ability these compounds have to recognize and bind to complementary strands of nucleic acid (i.e., hybridize) which could provide for “bottom-up” nanoscale manufacturing of functional materials including molecular electronic and photonic devices. Programmed materials synthesis with DNA is described in, for example, Mirkin, Inorganic Chem., 2000, 39, 2258-2272; Mirkin, MRS Bulletin, January, 2000, pgs. 43-54; and Storhoff et al., Chem. Rev., 1999, 99, 1849-1862. Also, hybridization of nucleic acids is discussed in the context of surface-confined DNA probe arrays in, for example, Heme et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1997, 119, 8916-8920; Levicky et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1998, 120, 9787-9792. Diagnostic applications are also important as discussed in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,361,944 to Mirkin et al. (Nanosphere, Inc.).